


Quiet On The Front

by paperstorm



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The First Avenger, Christmas Fluff, Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Fluff, Howling Commandos - Freeform, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-19 14:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17003574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: Steve deserves so much more; always, always deserving of more than the world has in store for him. Always being shortchanged; by a body that couldn’t contain his lion heart, by a material world that couldn’t look past his height and his constant illness, by an army that is happy enough to use him but will likely drop Steve like trash once this is all over. The least Bucky can do is give him Christmas.//In the snow in France on December 24, 1944, Bucky recreates Steve's favorite holiday, using what little they've carried with them into enemy territory.





	Quiet On The Front

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song Upside Down by The Story So Far

The winter wind is wicked. Sharp and biting, flurries of snow flinging into their chapped faces and stinging like needles, as they march further into dense, dark woods. It’s afternoon – or, at least, Bucky thinks it is – but overcast clouds and a canopy of tall trees above block the sun. There’s also smoke. The sky is always gray, lately, with the dull linger of smoke in the air from artillery fire. It never dissipates. The pack he’s carrying is heavy, but no heavier than anyone else’s other than Steve’s. They try to disperse the weight of their gear and supplies evenly so no one falls behind, but Steve’s weighs twice as much. He always insists on that, even though the rest of them tell him it isn’t necessary. He’s twice as strong as them or more, since the serum, and believes equal doesn’t mean the same as fair.  
   
“This looks okay,” Morita comments, as they come to a clearing after what feels like weeks of trudging through the snow. A little round open spot, flat ground and surrounded by a thick circle of trees. He looks back at Steve, for confirmation. “Right?”  
   
Steve resists being their leader outside of combat. He thinks they should be a partnership, everyone getting a fair say and the same number of votes. But it doesn’t work that way, in practice. A group always needs a leader, and these men are soldiers. They’re used to following orders. Steve, regardless of the serum, would have been a terrible foot-soldier. He’s never followed an order in his life. He was born to lead, and to rebel, even at 95 pounds with asthma and brittle bones hiding his potential from the rest of the world. Bucky always saw him, for who he was underneath, but that’s only because he bothered to look. No one else ever did.  
   
“Looks great,” Steve confirms. “We’ll stop here for the night.”  
   
Bags are unpacked, tents pitched, a fire pit assembled from sticks and stones Gabe finds in the brush. He lights it and gets a nice blaze going, and standing close to it, Bucky finally feels some of the chill melt away from his tired bones. He’s been cold for so long he almost forgets what it feels like to be warm. Memories of Brooklyn always taunt him when he lets the cold and the exhaustion get him down. Memories of sweating in the summer, and shivering in the winter but it was a different kind. The chill of the apartment he shared with Steve was offset so easily by curling up together in bed, under the pile of every blanket they owned. This is a different cold. It’s damp and never-ending, it seeps under Bucky’s skin and he can’t ever seem to get it out.  
   
It must have been later than Bucky thought, because night falls quickly. They consume their meager rations, just enough caloric intake to get them to tomorrow, and sit quietly around the fire. They’re deep into enemy territory. If they’re found, they’ll all be shot on sight, or worse, so stealth is the key to their survival. Bucky would much rather be killed than captured again. A few more days journey, and they’ll reach the Hydra training camp they’ve been assigned to take out. It’s the tenth covert operation they’ve run together in the six months since Steve showed up, and all have been successful. They work well together, the seven of them, and having a real life superhero on their team doesn’t hurt.  
   
There are three tents. The others switch up who bunks with who, not really minding one way or the other. Bucky always shares with Steve. He thinks, at this point, the others have to know why. They’ve never talked about it and he assumes they never will – it isn’t a thing you say out loud if you’d like to keep your teeth in your head – but it’s been long enough and they aren’t stupid. Bucky has to assume they know. Thus far, it hasn’t been an issue. Bucky thinks it’s maybe one of those things that only matters once people admit it. As long as they can all pretend, all look the other way when necessary and then carry on as if nothing has happened, it doesn’t need to be an issue. And they’re so careful, he and Steve, to keep it hidden. This is their team, these men are their brothers in arms. They all need each other if they’re going to survive this mission and however many more they’ll run together before this God-dammed war is over.  
   
Morita and Falsworth turn in for the night. Dum Dum and Dernier set up a tarp a little ways away from the fire, and lay out their guns for cleaning. Steve claps Bucky on the shoulder and goes to help, leaving Bucky still next to the fire with Gabe.  
   
“It’s Christmas Eve,” Gabe says quietly.  
   
Bucky blinks in surprise and looks at him. “Is it?”  
   
Gabe nods. He pulls a little leather-bound notebook from his pocket, where he’s made a calendar, days crossed off with a pencil as they pass. He shows it to Bucky, and the last X is on December 23rd.  
   
“Shit,” Bucky breathes. “I stopped keeping track so long ago. I guess I knew it was December, but. Didn’t know it was the 24th.”  
   
“Back home … the date is just something you know. You know? You see it on the top of the newspaper every morning. And you know if it’s Monday or Thursday or Saturday. You never have to look it up, it’s just a thing you walk around knowing. I never thought about that, until we got out here. Time gets all blurred together. There’s no Wednesday afternoon sale at the corner store, there’s no such thing as a weekend. It doesn’t matter, what day it is. But I started to hate that.” Gabe tucks the notebook back into the pocket of his coat. “Keeping track made me feel a little more human. Knowing when it was Saturday. Wondering if my Ma’s going to the store for milk and eggs and bread. She always did that on Saturday morning.”  
   
“Maybe by next Christmas we’ll be home.” Bucky puts a hand on Gabe’s arm, and doesn’t believe his own words. He has no reason to think they will be.  
   
“What about you? What’s waitin’ for you on the other side of all this?”  
   
“I have family. Back in Brooklyn. A mother and father. A little sister.” Bucky looks over at their other team members, disassembling guns and wiping them down and putting them back together. Steve is smiling as they talk quietly. He looks unburdened, and that’s rare lately. Usually Steve walks around with the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. And they’re impressive shoulders, now. But inside he’s the same. They can give him all the magic muscles they want, they could make him eight feet tall, and inside he’d still be that kid who wants to protect everyone from bullies and make people smile and stubbornly insist on accepting help from no one. “And Steve.”  
   
“You two were pretty close, huh?” Gabe asks. His voice is careful, asking the question but not asking it all the way, and Bucky answers with equal purpose in his judiciously chosen words.  
   
“Best pals since we were kids. We shared an apartment before the war, after he lost his parents when we were 18.” Bucky doesn’t mention it had been for almost seven years. He doesn’t suppose he could come up with a satisfactory way to explain it, to someone he doesn’t know well enough to entrust with secrets.  
   
Gabe nods.  
   
“He really loved Christmas,” Bucky says wistfully, remembering it. Remembering building snowmen in the schoolyard, remembering carols at church on Sundays, remembering cookies and stories about Santa Claus and how Sarah always scrimped and saved the entire year so Steve would have something under the plastic tree in their apartment, even if it wasn’t much.  
   
“I didn’t tell the others. Thought it might bum everyone out. Maybe you should tell him, though.” Gabe stands up. Just to Bucky, he softly says, “Merry Christmas, Sarge.” Then he waves at the others and says a little louder, “I’m turning in, fellas. See you in the morning, if we don’t freeze to death overnight.”  
   
Steve gives him a little wave, and goes back to the gun in his hand. Bucky watches him, cleaning all the pieces so thoroughly, a little frown on his forehead as he concentrates. After Steve had lost his mother, Bucky remembers one particularly heartbreaking day in late November when it had occurred to Steve that he would, for the first time in his life, be spending Christmas alone. It had always been Steve’s favorite time of year. Even though they were poor, and struggling, and it wasn’t a picture-perfect fairy tale holiday like the kind that appeared on Christmas cards and in all the magazines. Steve still loved it. He loved the lights and the decorations and the music and the traditions. He loved the idea of peace on Earth and good will and neighborly kindness, even if it was more imagined and symbolic than realistic. He’d get so excited for it, even into his 20s. After Sarah died, it had hit Steve suddenly one afternoon that Bucky would go back home to spend the holiday with his family, and Steve would be alone.  
   
“Are you stupid?” Bucky had asked, cuffing him on the side of the head. “You think I’m going to go have Christmas with my parents and Becca and leave you here all by yourself? You’re coming too, dummy.”  
   
“I don’t wanna intrude,” Steve had mumbled sadly.  
   
“You aren’t intruding. You’re family, too. My folks would be so pissed at me if I didn’t bring you along. Stupid,” Bucky had repeated, and wouldn’t hear any more about it. He consistently went against a lot of his better judgements where Steve was concerned, but allowing him to think he wasn’t welcome in the Barnes home on Christmas was not something Bucky could stand for.  
   
And now they’re in the woods, in the snow, somewhere off the grid in war-torn France, about to head into yet another storm of bullets and canons and fire in which they could all die just as easily as not, and it’s Christmas Eve. And Bucky is devastated, thinking about how much his best friend used to live for the holiday, thinking about how much he’d  _tried_ to keep Steve at home and away from this terrible war and how badly he’d failed. He’d wanted Steve to be safe. Instead, he was gone for a month and Steve was letting scientists experiment on him, and storming a Hydra base on his own with absolutely no backup, and assuming the role of the leader of their unit with no military experience. Bucky failed so spectacularly at keeping Steve safe. The least he can do is give him Christmas.  
   
Making sure Steve and the others are still occupied with their guns, Bucky wanders off a ways into the woods. He can’t go too far or he’ll lose the low light from their makeshift camp, but he goes far enough to find a small evergreen tree, just a sapling, about three feet tall. He pulls out his knife and starts to slice through the thin trunk. It only takes a minute. Holding the tiny tree in his hand, he suddenly feels badly about killing it before it even had a chance to grow, so he pulls off a few of the lower needles and sprinkles them on the ground around the stump he’s left. He isn’t even sure if that’s how these kinds of trees work. The needles might not be seeds. They probably aren’t. But it makes him feel marginally better, to know he tried.  
   
He sneaks back to the camp, managing to stick to the shadows enough to slip inside the tent he and Steve will share tonight without being noticed. He can hear their soft voices outside of the canvas, can hear Steve laughing. It both soothes and hurts him, hearing Steve’s laugh out here. Soothes, because it’s so rare – hurts, because it’s so rare. Steve in Brooklyn was the sweetest thing, when he wasn’t picking fights in alleys with guys twice his size just on the principal of them talking in a movie theater. Bucky loved that side of him too – that passionate, fiery heart that believed in justice and taking a stand and that unwinnable fights were still worth fighting if right was on his side. But when they were alone, Steve would laugh at Bucky’s dumb jokes, and try to cook even though they were both terrible at it, and sit on the fire escape with him to watch the sunset and philosophize, and sketch Bucky in his book when he thought Bucky wasn’t looking. He’s capable of more gentleness than people would assume, with the way he looks now. It isn’t his new body that’s taken that side away from him, it’s the constant grind of battle. If Bucky had the power, he’d scoop Steve up and take them far away from this place. Steve would care, that people were left behind hurt and dying because they’d turned tail and run. Bucky wouldn’t. The world never deserved Steve when he was small, so they don’t deserve him now just because he can throw a better punch.  
   
It's warmer in the tent despite the weather, because it’s close to the fire and the thick canvas fabric blocks the wind. Bucky digs a match out of his pocket to light the kerosene lantern. He slips off his boots and uses them to prop the tree up at the foot of their mats. He digs through his pack in search of anything that could possibly be used as decorations. He knows how ridiculous it will look regardless of what he can find, but hopes it might make Steve smile, even if it’s only to laugh at Bucky’s pathetic attempt. He finds medical supplies, and bullets, and spare socks for when the snow seeps through their standard-issue boots, icy and consuming. He scrunches a sock up and sticks it on the top of the tree like history’s gloomiest angel, and then stares at it for a moment, wondering if this entire idea was a terrible one. The trouble is he’s in it, now, already, and it might not be possible to change his mind and sneak the tree back out without being seen. That would be tougher to explain, so he carries on. He unwinds a ball of gauze and wraps it around the tree like ribbon. That doesn’t look too bad. He finds a string of twine, and he slices it into smaller pieces with his knife and ties up bullets so he can hang them on the branches like baubles. Their shiny metal casing glints in the light from the lamp. It isn’t exactly a tree he thinks Jesus would approve of. But it’s the best he can do with what he has, and really, Jesus probably wouldn’t approve of the war either.  
   
He can hear Steve’s voice outside, bidding good night to Dum Dum and Dernier. They keep watch in shifts, on nights like this, and Bucky can hear the other two settle around the fire to take the first one. Bucky’s heartrate increases, panicking for just a moment and again considering calling the whole thing off, except it’s too late, Steve’s footsteps are approaching, so Bucky just sits on his mat in his socks and waits to be made fun of.  
   
Steve pulls the flap back on the tent and closes it quickly behind himself to keep the heat in. He turns, with a smile on his face, to Bucky, and it’s a moment before he notices anything else. His baby blue eyes travel over, toward the lantern and Bucky’s sad attempt at giving him the holiday that had meant so much to both of them back home. For a while he just stares at it, lips slightly parted, cheeks pink but maybe that’s just from the wind outside, eyes shining but that’s the lamp-light, probably, not something else. Bucky tries very hard not to read anything into the way Steve’s eyes go liquid, and his voice comes out soft as he says, “Buck.”  
   
Bucky shrugs. “It’s Christmas Eve.”  
   
“I know.” Steve moves closer to examine the tree. He kneels down, his fingers glide over Bucky’s improvised ornaments. His hands are so much bigger than they used to be. Surer and stronger, but maybe clumsier than the fine, artist’s fingers that used to whip up such beautiful drawings in the space of a half hour as if it were nothing special at all. “I thought you didn’t remember.”  
   
“I didn’t. Gabe told me. I haven’t kept track of the date in months.”  
   
“Time doesn’t work the same, out here,” Steve agrees. He looks back at Bucky. “You made a tree.”  
   
“I tried.” Bucky knows how inadequate it is. Steve deserves so much more; always, always deserving of more than the world has in store for him. Always being shortchanged; by a body that couldn’t contain his lion heart, by a material world that couldn’t look past his height and his constant illness, by an army that is happy enough to use him but will likely drop Steve like trash once this is all over, if he survives. If any of them survive.  
   
Sensing his hesitance, Steve shakes his head, and sends a soft smile Bucky’s way. “It’s perfect.”  
   
“It’s lame.”  
   
“No, it isn’t.” Steve crawls over on his knees to the mat where Bucky’s sitting, and settles onto the ground with him. He gets close, one of his legs on either side of Bucky’s body, bracketing him like parentheses and taking one of his hands. He brings it up to his lips. “I love it. Thank you.”  
   
“You always loved the holidays,” Bucky says. His voice sounds weak, and he doesn’t know why. Steve likes his gift, he should be happy. Instead he’s thinking about their last Christmas together, before the war. Bucky would have made it so much more special, if he’d known.  
   
“Still do. They’re just suspended, for now. We’ll have them again.”  
   
“You can’t know that for sure.”  
   
Steve opens his mouth as if to argue, but then thinks the better of it, and kisses Bucky’s knuckles again. “No, I can’t. But it’s Christmas Eve, so let me pretend.”  
   
“Remember the year we were 16? When my Pop got our family a radio?”  
   
“We used to listen to the Champion Spark Plug hour every week. We never missed it.” Steve smiles again, and Bucky likes that. They’ve had so many reasons to frown over the last few months, it’s so nice to see him smile.  
   
“You usually got comics.”  
   
Steve nods and laughs. “Because they were cheap. Tintin, and those detective ones.”  
   
“You loved the stories. You always loved stories. That’s why she bought them for you.”  
   
Still nodding, Steve licks his lips. He never talks about his mother. He never has, since a few weeks after she died. Sometimes Bucky wishes he would, but he never insists. Steve shifts in just a little closer. His body heat radiates over and soaks into Bucky’s skin. He’s so much warmer, since the serum. He was always a little cold, before, mostly because of bad circulation and malnutrition and likely nearly always running a low-grade fever for one reason or another. Now, he’s gone in the opposite direction. Like the serum is active magic coursing through his veins, Steve is always burning hot – far warmer than is normal for a human adult. In their current situation, it renders Bucky the luckiest of their group. He gets a built-in furnace in his tent. He tries not to feel too guilty about it. Bucky finds himself leaning into all that heat, and Steve takes his weight easily with his new strength; lets Bucky rest against his chest.  
   
“You bought me a set of brushes, the year we got our own place,” Steve remembers. He kisses Bucky’s forehead and then leaves his lips resting there so they brush over Bucky’s skin. “The nicest set I ever had.”  
   
“The look on your face was worth every week it took me to save up for them. And you painted me, that night.”  
   
“I remember. It was one of my favorites. I sketched you, the other day.”  
   
“You did?”  
   
“You were sitting by the fire in the morning, before we packed up. I don’t know what you were thinking about, but you looked … peaceful. I tried to save it in my head so I could draw it, later.”  
   
Bucky sits up. His skin prickles, the hairs on his arms standing up, and something pleasant and ticklish running down his spine. “Can I see it?”  
   
He’s expecting Steve to have to get up, to fish it out of his pack, but instead Steve unzips his jacket and pulls a folded piece of paper out of an inside pocket. He hands it over. Bucky unfolds it, and takes in the gray pencil etchings that bend into the shape of his own face; the angle of his jaw and the curve of his lips, little curls around his hairline from the damp air, shading that looks like a flush on his cheeks, a pensive, thoughtful look in his eyes. It seems almost to move, if Bucky unfocused his eyes just a little he can imagine his image blinking, or his nose wrinkling in a sniff. It’s rough and unfinished around the edges, like Steve sketched it out in a hurry, but there’s something enchanted about the way he can capture moments in time and recreate them with an added dash of magic, making them more special than they were in reality. Not for the first time, Bucky finds himself wishing he could live in the world Steve draws. It’s always seemed just a bit gentler than their own.  
   
“Didn’t have time to finish it properly,” Steve says, as if he thinks Bucky is about to harshly review his work like an art critic and pronounce it poor.  
   
Bucky shakes his head. “It’s beautiful.”  
   
“You’re beautiful.” Steve’s lips find the side of Bucky’s head; kissing his hair. “Easy to find inspiration when I have you as a subject.”  
   
Bucky leans back into him, still unable to tear his eyes away from the drawing. “I wish I had half your talent, just so I could draw you like this. You deserve that. You’re beautiful, too. Always were.”  
   
Steve doesn’t answer, but his arms go around Bucky’s body.  
   
“I mean it. Always, always were. Even when no one else saw it.” Bucky notices, now, the way people fawn over Steve. He tries not to let it bother him, but can’t always keep the resentment from creeping in, that he’s always known the things about Steve that it took the rest of the world superficial, physical improvements to figure out.  
   
Steve’s hand comes up to cup Bucky’s cheek, tilting his face up so their eyes can meet. There are tears in Steve’s, but unshed. Just shining there in his bright blue eyes. They’re the one thing on him that’s completely the same; entirely unchanged in his transformation. Everything else is bigger, stronger, better – or, at least better by everyone else’s standards. Not necessarily by Bucky’s. But his eyes are exactly the same.  
   
“I think the others know about us,” Bucky tells him. He’d already suspected it, but the conversation with Gabe earlier had served as confirmation.  
   
“Did somebody say something?”  
   
Bucky shakes his head. “Not really. I just don’t see how they could think anything else. They know we always bunk together. They have to notice when we sneak off.”  
   
“I suppose so.” Steve nods. His lips press together and then release, plump and soft. Bucky wants to kiss them, even though there is a possibility this conversation is heading to Steve deciding they shouldn’t, anymore. Steve came here to save people. He let himself be experimented on for the cause. If this secret is found out, it could ruin everything.  
   
“Gabe asked, earlier, if we’d always been close. It was the way he said it, more than what he said. I can’t explain it, I just think they know.”  
   
Steve’s thumb rubs under Bucky’s eye, wiping away moisture he hadn’t realized was gathering there against the delicate skin. “They wouldn’t rat on us.”  
   
“You trust them that much?”  
   
“It was your unit before it was mine, Sergeant,” Steve reminds him. “In fact, you still technically out-rank me. My title isn’t real. So, you tell me. Do you trust your men?”  
   
Bucky wants to trust them, more than he’s sure that they can. He also isn’t willing to give Steve up, even if it gets them discharged, or worse, so they don’t have much choice in the matter. “Yes.”  
   
“Good. Me too.”  
   
“Merry Christmas, Stevie,” Bucky whispers.  
   
“Thank you so much, for this. I can’t believe you made me a tree,” Steve whispers back.  
   
“Decorated with bullets and gauze and a dirty sock.”  
   
Steve laughs, low and heartfelt. It travels over Bucky’s skin like melted honey. “The thought counts for everything. More than you know. I miss our old life, but I’ve still got you.”  
   
“Always got me.”  
   
Steve licks his lips and then presses them into Bucky’s, soft and sweet. Bucky threads his fingers into Steve’s hair, tilting his head so he can deepen the slide of their mouths, so familiar and comforting but still sends sparks along his skin. Steve’s tongue darts out to taste, just briefly; just a slow, wet brush along the inside of Bucky’s lower lip, and then it slips away, and Bucky wants it back. Steve’s lips fall away, and the breath they share is moist and unsteady.  
   
“They’re right outside,” Steve says, regretfully.  
   
They’re closer than usual, because of the cold. For safety, they don’t usually set the fire up quite so near the tents. Tonight, they’d had to, so the watchmen are within earshot. Bucky knew that. It’s why they’ve been whispering the whole time. He just wishes it weren’t the case. He’d like nothing more right now than to lay Steve out and demonstrate he means it, when he foolishly promises forever. It isn’t a promise he can make, but he makes it anyway. He’ll fight with every inch of will in his body, to stay with Steve.  
   
Steve turns his head to look back at the tree, and the smile that takes over his face is small, but happy. Bucky could stare at him forever, as long as he always looks like he does right now; peaceful and content and glowing in lamplight.  
   
“I love you,” he murmurs.  
   
Steve tips them, so they slowly fall to the mat and end up cradled in each other’s arms. Steve’s drawing gets crumpled between them. He kisses the tip of Bucky’s nose and nuzzles into him, closing his eyes with his face next to Bucky’s. He’s so warm, and Bucky burrows into all that heat, and finally thaws out from their endless day of walking. He exhales, and feels like he’s floating in Steve’s arms.  
   
“I love you, too,” Steve says back. “Merry Christmas.”  
 

**Author's Note:**

> [come talk to me on tumblr if you want!](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/)


End file.
